Green finance for sustainability: bibliometric analysis in global perspective

Purpose Recent literature has focused on green finance in the form of investments and sustainability. This interest has arisen because of concerns over climate and emissions issues. Hence, this study aims to assess the current state of research on green finance and suggest future research directions. Design/methodology/approach Academic literature was sourced from the Scopus database (2000–2024). To ensure accuracy, specific inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied, yielding 1,865 articles. The selected articles were analysed using VOSviewer software and the Bibliometrix R package. Findings The study indicated that green finance research is no longer confined to the examination of environmental problems alone. Instead, it has progressed into an integrated framework linking policy interventions, technological innovation and financial instruments. Moreover, from a geographical perspective, green finance is moving from Western market-led models to Asian state-led sustainability models. Research limitations/implications This study used a combination of various analyses and presented future research areas for academics. A theoretical basis was also considered to verify the themes that emerged from the analysis. Practical implications Practitioners will have a clear understanding of green finance based on the themes identified in this study. The proposed themes and subthemes can be used as pointers in decision-making processes related to green finance. Mapping existing policies and regulations to the identified research themes reveals gaps. Insights from this type of mapping highlight the need for future government intervention in terms of policy and regulation. Originality/value Previous bibliometric studies have had a limited focus on combined analysis of authors, journals and countries, co-occurrence analysis of keywords, and clustering using co-citation analyses. In addition, the theoretical basis was not considered. These shortcomings were addressed in this study, and future research areas were identified and verified on a theoretical basis.